oswaldgrouse:

Ermenegildo Zegna spring 2011

oswaldgrouse:

Ermenegildo Zegna spring 2011

NEW YORK, September 12, 2010

By Meenal Mistry

Earlier today, I spotted two oft-photographed young fashion editors wearing the high-heeled duck boots that Tommy Hilfigershowed for Fall. A minor anecdotal incident? Perhaps. But for a man who has the masses sewn up, a glittery little chunk of fashion cred has to be gratifying—especially in the year his business turns 25.

The new life in last season’s collection was evidently the result of bringing in designer Peter Som to splash a bucketful of his uptown-eccentric sensibility over Hilfiger’s rotating library of classics. The partnership continued on the Spring catwalk, where the new contender for coveted shoe is a leather Top-Sider raised onto a blocky platform heel. The theme, in case you hadn’t guessed yet: Twisted Country Club. At this madcap Maidstone, a girl can wear her khakis as a backless halter dress, and no one frowns on a flippy tennis skirt in Pepto pink silk.

Meanwhile, her rocker-wannabe boyfriend isn’t afraid to express himself by the color of his socks, which will inevitably be visible between the hem of his rolled-up chinos or skinny pegged trousers and the top of his (possibly leopard) loafers. He can take a bright hue in bigger doses, too. You say powder pink double-breasted blazer, he says canary and magenta madras trousers.

It was a peppy, preppy vision that, at times, neared the far boundaries of Hilfiger’s codes. Yet it never spilled into something that felt untrue to his spirit. Before the show, a disembodied voice announced crowd-control directions for Hilfiger’s very lavish post-show party in celebration of his 25th anniversary. Then came the promise that this was the first collection of the next 25. Not a bad start at that.

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PARIS, June 24, 2010

By Tim Blanks

For his new collection, Paul Helbers, men’s studio director for Louis Vuitton, imagined a digital bohemian traveling the world via his computer screen, composing an eclectic personal style with no boundaries. Helbers’ “head trip,” as he called it, incorporated hints of a pan-global sensibility into a look that was still very Louis Vuitton—quietly luxe clothes for the well-heeled contemporary traveler.

As promised by the helicopter roar that launched the show, the journey was less head trip than pond skip across a range of references: a little Chinese quilting; some abstracted animal prints; a suggestion of extreme sports in a laced parachute jacket or a cream quilted fencing jacket; a bit of safari in a curry-colored camp shirt. Though restraint is generally his byword, this modern adventurer does occasionally want to break out, as in an eruption of parakeet green that disrupted the flow of neutrals.

Certain items were treated with extreme prejudice, like a leather jacket “tattooed” with undulating grooves, or a parka that had been “sun-distressed” to seersucker translucence. True, these were subtle flourishes, but that is Helbers’ strength. Who knew that self-belting pants could be such a source of fascination? They are when he designs them with such precision. And as for the footwear: Not for the first time, it was the highlight of the collection.

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NEW YORK, September 11, 2010

By Tim Blanks

Christophe Lemaire said good-bye toLacoste with a collection that skillfully honored the legacy of René Lacoste himself while incorporating some of Lemaire’s own signatures. The designer, who is taking the reins at Hermès, claimed inspiration from modernist architecture for the graphic monochrome opening of the show, but a white shirt paired with baggy, pleated pants ribbed at the ankle brought to mind photos of René and his friends from the 1920’s. And there were polo dresses that could step straight out onto a tennis court. Lemaire really kicked off with a group of Eastern-toned pieces: ochre, burnt orange, cinnamon, sunset pink. They’re the same colors he used for Spring in the collection he designs under his own name, and they were as winning here. He showed them in the same easy Oriental tunic and kimono shapes for women, and a Mao-like silhouette for men. It was an intriguing gesture to leave such a strong personal stamp on his last collection. Perhaps it was his way of saying that his successor, Felipe Oliveira Baptista, will find a lot more to work with than Lemaire did when he arrived at the label ten years ago.

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PARIS, June 25, 2010

By Tim Blanks

The biannual John Galliano menswear spectacular began this season with a tip of Charlie Chaplin’s bowler hat to his silent masterpiece, Modern Times. Dressed as Chaplin, model Scott Barnhill tumbled out of a huge clock backdrop, and Galliano’s movie madness began to unspool. Why Charlie? The rationale was that the designer wanted to make a statement about new proportions in menswear, and the Little Tramp’s shrunken jacket and baggy pants seemed like a good place to start. Hence, Galliano’s dropped-crotch pants and jackets fitted to the body (exaggeratedly so for the show). A trench in a Lurex military twill might not have been specifically Chaplin-esque, but it captured his flagrant dandyism.

Chaplin was followed on the catwalk by Buster Keaton, porkpie hat, lugubrious expression, three-piece suit, and all (kudos to the performances—Galliano is as demanding a director as he is a designer). A group of retro-tailored pieces were really a way of introducing a Death in Venice subtext that allowed the designer to flood the catwalk with boys in his bathing suits and underwear, which must be a particularly lucrative license for him, given the amount of show time he always devotes to this passage.

The finale involved formalwear literally stripped—like its models—of everything that didn’t directly enhance the voluminous trousers and evening jackets, reconceptualized with straps, zips, and a generally brazen attitude. Then an orgy of strobe lighting brought the whole shebang to an appropriately surreal close, with Chaplin, Keaton, and half-naked boys crowding the catwalk. The French made Galliano a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur for his services to fashion. Next time Hollywood hands out the Cecil B. DeMille Award, Galliano would surely be a wortHhy recipient for his services to spectacle.

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FLORENCE, June 17, 2010

By Tim Blanks

The gardens of what is reputedly the most beautiful villa in all of Florence provided the venue for the celebration of Raf Simons’ fifth anniversary designing Jil Sander menswear. And, as he told Style.com the other day, the setting also offered up nature as an inspiration. She was at her most wayward on Thursday, blowing out the windows at Pitti with a raging hailstorm, casting a lowering shadow over Raf’s garden party, but then providing an epic sunset for guests as they arrived at the villa. You can’t compete with those effects. But Simons is certainly the right designer to extract order from all that chaos. He chose friction as a response, just as you’d expect him to.

To a soundtrack of vintage techno, almost by definition the most unnatural sound known to man, he presented a profusion of color—but unlike any colors you’d find in nature. Intense fluoro shades were combined and layered to create a synthetic sundae. A hot pink shirt paired with bright orange pants sounds like the kind of combo that might generate some hibiscus heat. In Simons’ hands, it was a cool, precise challenge to nature’s own chaotic palette. As literal as he got was a floral print, dark and clotted. It translated well to a jersey body with a tattoo effect (bringing to mind an old something by Jean Paul Gaultier, a designer Simons admires).

The overt sensuality of such an item and the op art graphism of some striped pieces struck chords in a collection that otherwise felt familiar. The uniform tailoring is a Simons signature. Interrupting the formality of that tailoring by showing a jacket with a pair of what looked like boxers is the kind of boy-centric ploy he’s used before. The synthetic color-blocking is not new to him (hello, Yves Klein blue). Even the accordion pleating on a jacket sleeve or the back of a coat harked back to the recent past. Predictability would once have been anathema to Raf, but again, as he said to Style.com, he wants to “free Jil from itself,” leave a different kind of vocabulary for whoever eventually follows him at Jil Sander. As a man with legacy (and an anniversary) on his mind, it makes sense he would want to consolidate the signatures he’s established at the brand. So this was the kind of familiarity that bred content (not quite the old-shoe variety, though, because the pink-soled black oxfords were a gold star). Still, familiarity was an odd sensation to feel at the end of anything connected to Raf Simons. Nature at least was patient. The rain held off till the last models had disappeared back into the topiary.

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PARIS, June 24, 2010

By Rebecca Voight

Jean Paul Gaultier set his show in a steamy hammam, with bare-chested models for a backdrop. We were in Marrakech, with Yves Saint Laurent and Betty Catroux look-alikes parading down the runway in a sheer djellaba and a black version of YSL’s famous lace-up safari tunic, respectively.

Gaultier has always been at home in the souk, and ethnic inspirations find their way into his collection almost every season, be it through color, drape, or pattern. For Spring, he’s focused on volumes: a long tunic worn with a suit, a patterned jacket with matching shorts, or a sleeveless caftan paired with a shirt and tie.

It was all quite elegant, of course, and also a bit subdued for JPG. Spice came in the form of surprises like Jackson Pollock-style white splatter painting on black trousers, tunics, and matching tote bags, and, at the end, the celestial prints that came alive when seen through 3-D glasses. The bespectacled Saint Laurent would’ve approved.

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 PARIS, June 26, 2010

By Tim Blanks

Designer Véronique Nichanian pressed all the Spring 2011 buttons with her collection for Hermès, from the incredible whiteness of the outfits that opened and closed the show to the incredible lightness of a coat, a jacket, and windbreaker cut from a material called “technical madras”—so fine it was almost sheer. Then there were the shorts, the sandals, the summer skins, and the requisite accent of intense color (here a green that Nichanian called mint, but was more emerald).

Hermès is the quiet storm of the luxury world, but rather than resting on her platinum laurels Nichanian has steadily loosened the stays of heritage. This season, she introduced vêtements hybrids, or hybrid clothing, like the shirt with a blouson back, or a diagonal zip closing, or a hood. The same kind of relaxed spirit dictated notch lapels on her double-breasted jackets (a small detail, but it felt modern). The house is legendary for its skins, but the company’s founders could hardly have imagined suede being used for a bright green T-shirt, a tobacco-colored camp shirt, or sand-toned pajamas. The emblematic Hermès horse bit, meanwhile, was printed in an impressionistic blur on a silk shirt. Again, that felt like the kind of update that wouldn’t frighten the horses of the traditional clients, while it just might attract a new, younger customer, the juiciest prey on the luxury frontier. Nichanian has become a pro at balancing the two without, it seems, any compromise.

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MILAN, June 21, 2010

By Tim Blanks

Gucci designer Frida Giannini is very taken with all those iconic sixties bohos, the louche-living set that was headed up by the Rolling Stones and the Gettys—Talitha and John Paul, Jr., the latter of which she name-checked in the notes for her latest men’s show.

Fact is, once you stripped him of his caftan and ethnic doodads, JPG Jr. was pretty much like any other wannabe sixties groover in his skinny suit and foulard. And that Nothing Special quality was unfortunately what his presence bestowed on this Gucci collection. When she took over at the house, Giannini was regularly lambasted for the flash and trash of her work, but that Roman vulgarity brought something spicy and new to the Gucci table. As she has grown up and into the job, that’s been sidelined by an increasingly respectful trawl through the archives.

What Giannini is doing is too rich to be bland, but it has definitely lost some of its flavor. Today’s show was a perfect capsule of Gucci jet-set emblems: the sheen-y silk/mohair suit, the chocolate brown safari suit, the rawhide leather jacket, the suede-fronted cardigan, the Indian-embroidered denim shirt, the silk jacquard evening jacket. Giannini moved onto this haute bourgeois turf last season, but as much as she loaded up on the camel coats then, she’d also insert a wingy jacket in midnight blue ponyskin or ocelot print. The equivalent this time around was the silk jacket with the tone-on-tone horse bit-and-stirrup design, an entirely sober tip of the cap to the house heritage.

Intriguingly, the most compelling section was a group in natural organic cotton—a safari suit, a peacoat, jean jacket, biker jacket. It had the same ghostly presence as undyed denim, and it felt like the most modern stuff on the catwalk. The fact that Giannini could put it there, in amidst her JPG Jr. memorial gear, means you still have to watch this girl.

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